Page 26 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas
He had spent the first part of their meal staring at her hair. She had caught the heavy mess of it up in the top of her head so there were riotous curls spilling out from what looked like a makeshift bun she had done herself. When he knew full well there was staff for such things, as he had hired them himself. She was a Villela wife now, and really, he ought to make it clear to her that she needed to think more elegance and less efficiency.
Yet somehow, he was too busy imagining wrapping his fingers in those curls to say anything about how she’d styled them tonight. “At the moment, the plan is to have a quiet, congenial dinner and an early night, as my presence is required in London in the morning.”
“I mean for me,” she said. “I can’t say I minded being on a bit of a holiday from the real world, but surely I’ll need todosomething. I can’t drift about the house all day long, can I?” She sighed. “I need a job, Tiago.”
He blinked at that, letting the sheer temerity of it settle. A bit. “Villela wives do not work.”
Lillie propped her chin on one hand. “What did your mother do with her days?”
Tiago sat back in his chair. “She had a great many interests. Her family had once been deeply involved in the cork industry here, and she was instrumental in the founding of a local museum that explores the impact of cork not only on this region, but on Portugal as a whole. Her other charitable interests included literacy, medical conditions that were dear to her heart for any number of sad reasons, and she also bred her hounds. Podengos.”
“None of that sounds like a job.”
“Lillie.” He shook his head, taken back. “You cannotwork, of course.”
“You make that sound dirty.Working.When you do it yourself.”
“Villela wives do not,” he replied. And he sighed when she stared back at him in a kind of amazement. “It isn’t done. I understand that you came into this accidentally, Lillie. That can’t be helped. I’m willing to make allowances.”
She laughed, but somehow, it was less merry than usual. “Allowances?”
“The ideal wife for a man in my position would have been trained from birth to assume this role. Part of the training would include being an heiress of great rank and fortune herself. She would have been educated in the finest schools and would have involved herself in only the most worthy charities afterward. There would never be any question of herworkingin some menial job.”
“It is a terrible pity, then, you could not have married this paragon.” Lillie gazed at him as if she pitied him. But also, if he wasn’t mistaken, as if she wanted to take the fork she held and throw it at him. “What a shame it is that you have been saddled with the likes of me, a peasant straight through. Why, I don’t know how you can hold your head up.”
“I didn’t offer any moral judgments,” he said, and it was distressing to find that he had to work to keep his voice steady. Calm. To remain the man he had worked so hard to become, and not give in to the strange urges this woman brought out in him.
“Didn’t you?” she asked. She pushed back at the table and stood up too quickly, and he shot to his feet, too. Without knowing he meant to move.
“Villelas do not make scenes in the middle of a meal,” he told her, a bit more darkly than was wise. He knew it even as he said it. “Or at all.”
Lillie glared at him. “Villelas can do whatever they like, with my blessing, but I am a grown woman who will continue to do as she likes. What I’m trying to tell you, Tiago, is that I’m bored.”
“Bored.”He repeated the word as if it was a curse. Because, to him, it always had been. His parents had made sure of that.
“Bored silly,” she shot right back at him. “I’ve taken a thousand walks. I’ve read stacks and stacks of books. I’ve entertained myself by asking your staff for outrageous things to see if they can provide them on a moment’s notice, and guess what? They can. If this is the life of the rich and famous, I’m sorry to tell you it’s tedious in the extreme.”
“There are many people who would kill to have these advantages you consider so boring.”
“It’s not the advantages that I don’t like,” she fired back. “It’s that I need a purpose. Surely you understand that. You seem to have such an ingrained idea of what your life is meant to be. You know your purpose here. But what’s mine? Given that I’m not this perfect, effortlessly aristocratic Villela wife of myth and legend. I need to dosomethingor I’ll go mad.”
“You are my wife. You will be the mother of my child.” He very nearly laughed, not that he found this amusing. “It seems to me that should be enough to occupy your thoughts instead of all these unnecessary concerns about some outside purpose.”
“Oh,” Lillie said sweetly, “you are my husband and will be the father of this child. Does it consumeyourthoughts?”
He thought he might actually have growled. “I think of little else.”
She blew out a breath. “The baby is going to come one way or another. And like it or not, I will have to figure out how to be a mother then.” She shook her head. “In the meantime, I’m a wife, but I don’t even know what that means. And I don’t think you do, either.”
“I know exactly what a Villela wife must be,” he retorted. “As I have been at pains to tell you. My mother was remarkably good at it. After she died, my father told anyone who would listen that there is no point in him remarrying, because no one else could possibly do it as well as she did.”
“Do what?” Lillie asked, very distinctly, as if he was the one being obtuse.
“She supported him in all things. Everything she did, everything she said, brought honor to our name.”
“But what about their marriage?” Lillie demanded. “Did they laugh? Did they play games? You never say what they werelike. Did they kick off their shoes and dance around this table? Did they fight, have private jokes, and hold hands on their afternoon walks?”
Tiago stared at her in astonishment. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. They worked well together. They were an excellent team.”